Challenges, impacts and implications for the future
Sebastian Funk
https://epiforecasts.io
“We were losing ourselves in details […] all we needed to know is, are the number of cases rising, falling or levelling off?”
Hans Rosling, Liberia, 2014
\[ \begin{align} \textrm{New infections}~I(t) & = R_t \sum_{\tau} g_{\tau} I_{t-\tau}\\ \textrm{Reproduction number}~R(t) & = R_{t-1} \exp(\textrm{GP})\\ \textrm{Delayed reporting}~D(t) & = \sum_\tau \xi_\tau I_{t-\tau} \\ \textrm{Observations}~C(t) & = \mathrm{NegBin}(D_t \omega_{(t \textrm{mod} 7)}, \phi) \end{align} \]
Implemented in stan.
Originally used methodology that ignored delays.
“The Rt estimates generated by the EpiForecasts team were used extensively by the WHO COVID-19 Analytics unit. They formed a core part of two routine analysis pipelines […] regularly presented to the incident management structure at WHO headquarters, including senior management, as well as regional and national WHO offices.”
Workshop at WHO Hub Berlin (8-9 October, 2024)
“We were losing ourselves in details […] all we needed to know is, are the number of cases rising, falling or levelling off?”
Hans Rosling, Liberia, 2014
For more detail:
Abbott & Funk, 2022, Reflections on two years estimating effective reproduction numbers
Slides at https://epiforecasts.io/slides/ini_20240805.html